Thursday, December 22, 2011

Last day of school 2011

This is it. The last day.

Dropped kids this morning with a ton of luggage. Sweet had two paper bags of treats for the recess paras. And a giant blue grocery bag with his book exchange gift, a teacher gift and a "tree" gift of the sharpie markers his teacher wanted. He also had a veggie tray with ranch.... his contribution to the healthy holiday party.

Tuff was lugging a teacher gift and a "tree" gift. Her tree gift was glitter glue.

This year for teacher gifts I went with Body Shop items.

Normally I give black gloves. Two stores in town offer a holiday price ($9.99-$12.99 for regularly $25 gloves) for nice black driving gloves. Either Manzella or Black Diamond brand. I have the Black Diamond ones and have been wearing them for years. They are nice alone or layered under my John Deere gloves. And they are longer... so they cover naked wrists. I like that. I also think black gloves are easy to re-gift so if they don't want them they can pass them along.

As the daughter of a teacher I realize no teacher needs another coffee mug, Christmas ornament or body lotion from the dollar store. So I went and broke my own rule and got lotions and potions. But... Body Shop. Right? I hit a deal at Body Shop and for $25 I got two gifts (plus a cute bag I plan to use as part of a housewarming gift later this year). One teacher is getting a giant jug of strawberry body wash, a bath pouf, peppermint foot scrub (I love that scrub.... I had a hard time not keeping it for myself) and hemp hand cream. The hemp hand cream is raved about... but it kind of smells like dirt. My mom and sister love it. Maybe next year.... The other teacher got a vanilla spice set... body butter, body scrub & a bar of soap. So those were both high-value gifts on the cheap.

The SACC ladies got treat bags like the paras. This year was fudge, cheerio scotcheroos, white chocolate cookies & hershey's kisses. I'm not going to lie... it wasn't my best effort. The fudge was overcooked and hard. Tastes good but not my usual creamy flawless fudge. The scotcheroos were an effort to use up some seriously stale cheerios... good but would be better with new cheerios. And the cookies.... I discovered I had no brown sugar. So they were messed up. Here's what I like to do.... use your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe and then sub white chocolate chips and adorable tiny blue snowflake sprinkles.... make them small and round and bite-sized. They are adorable and tasty. Well.... no blue snowflake sprinkles could be found so I used red and green holly..... they looked like spinach cookies. Not adorable. I'll do better next year.

I didn't get anything for the superintendent, music teacher, pe teacher or front desk staff. Is that bad?

1 comment:

My son's teacher got a Lowe's gift card. My son insisted that is what she wanted and he's usually right. We got the principal, the RE teacher and the principal's assistant who I probably deal with the most about stuff, $25 Chilie's gift cards. I don't normally give gift cards as gifts but in these circumstances, when I sorta know them and they spend time with my presuish babee, I thought it was safest.